Changes to Residential Tenancies Act Benefit Tenants, Landlords

Tenants and landlords will benefit from new regulations and changes to the Residential Tenancies Act that are now effective.

“The changes respond to what staff heard from tenants and landlords during recent consultations,” said Service Nova Scotia and Internal Services Minister Patricia Arab. “They build on improvements introduced in 2018, with the goal to make it easier and more efficient for tenants and landlords to use our residential tenancies program services while balancing the interests of both groups.”

Here are the highlights:

• providing more ways for tenants and landlords to serve one another documents, including electronically
• reducing the minimum timeframe landlords must store abandoned property from 60 days to 30 days
• allowing tenants to give notice to change their year-to-year lease to month-to-month instead of asking for a landlord’s permission
• providing landlords with entry times to show an apartment to a prospective tenant or purchaser where there is a fixed-term lease in place
• introducing rules, rights and responsibilities for tenants and landlords when subletting or assigning a lease
• terminating a lease the next month after a single tenant dies to eliminate unnecessary financial hardship for family of the deceased

There are more than 300,000 people living in more than 110,000 rental properties.

These changes are part of ongoing work to modernize the residential tenancy program and support government's commitment to cut red tape for business and citizens, modernize legislation and make government services more accessible and efficient for Nova Scotians.

For more information, visit https://beta.novascotia.ca/residential-tenancies-act-legislative-changes .